Agent-based modelling using naming game for language evolution studies

Abstract

The article describes approaches to applying agent-based modelling and, particularly, the case of Naming Game, in linguistic studies and within teaching foreign languages. Computational modelling implementation has become a comprehensive and ambitious field of research, as its methods are applicable to solving tasks set within various aspects of contemporary society and science. The main purpose of this paper is to perform an analysis of Naming Game implementation in language emergence and evolution studies. To achieve this purpose we set several tasks: to present a vast literature review on agent-based modelling in linguistics and other adjacent sciences; to give an overview and description of the Naming Game; to perform simulations within the Naming Game and present their outcomes. As the main methodology the article uses simulations. The paper concludes that a clear hysteresis effect is present in the dependence of the size of the population vocabulary from the size of vocabulary of its average agent. At the point where the population vocabulary transitions into the uniform distribution the average agent’s vocabulary reaches saturation and plateaus. Those dynamics also change as the population vocabulary grows and declines. Agent-based modelling is a relatively novel direction for linguistics with a modest number of research papers. Results, presented in the paper, give a fresh angle on the issues of language emergence and evolution.